Why not change tacks...

By Fester:

What is the saying concerning insanity.... To do the same thing over and over again expecting different results... or something close to that.

The Bush policy towards groups, regimes and countries that they consider hostile is to either bomb/invade/occupy them if they are weak enough, or pretend that they don't exist and attempt to get out allies and dependencies to shun them.  The theory, which is similar to the Cuban embargo theory, is that internal legitimacy is derived from external recognition and thus the deprivation of external recognition and connectivity will destroy the 'evil' group. 

Well, that has not worked with Iran as its pensioneers are in power in Baghdad.  It has not worked with North Korea as it has tested a nuke and increased its reprocessing capacity by an order of magnitude during its shunned phase, it has not worked with Hezbollah as it emerged as the de facto legitimate government of south Lebanon, and it has not been working with Hamas. 

So why not try something different....

The Obama administration is sending up some trial balloons that it would be open to talking with Hamas concerning Gaza and some type of eventual settlement with Isreal.  And the right wing blogs are inflamed.

But why not? The shun, ignore and bomb policy has not worked.  Isreal, our ally, has engaged in two major military operations, one a strategic defeat,  and bore a domestic terrorism campaign during the Bush Administration.  The current carte blanche and ignore strategy has not produced good results for Isreal as a whole.  Trying something different may or may not produce different and improved results, but the current course is definately sub-optimal.  

Hell, on most Bushian policies, if I was the chief policy advisor for Obama, I would be detailing junior policy analysts to write very short briefs on doing the exact opposite of what was being done under Bush and their costs and impacts.  The only areas I would exclude would be the known good work at reasonable costs on homelessness prevention/assistance and African AIDS/epidemic disease work.